DeLay Forgets About His Own Apology

Angered by a recent Law and Order episode that referenced him, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay wrote to the head of NBC and stated, “This manipulation of my name and trivialization of the sensitive issue of judicial security represents a reckless disregard for the suffering initiated by recent tragedies and a great disservice to public discourse.”

DeLay assumed the Law and Order reference came because of his March 31st 2005 threat: “Mrs. Schiavo’s death is a moral poverty and a legal tragedy. This loss happened because our legal system did not protect the people who need protection most, and that will change. The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today.”

So in his letter to the president of NBC, DeLay defended the threat by saying, “When a responsible journalist like [Fox News Channel’s] Brit Hume made an inquiry into such comments, he quickly understood them to be limited to Congress’s oversight responsibilities and nothing more.”

Wait. Why is DeLay trying to trot out his original defense of the threat: “Nothing in my statement was threatening, irresponsible, dangerous, inappropriate, intimidating, or reckless…No sincere interpretation of my statement could lead a reader to any other conclusion.”

We’ve already gone through this. The comments were reckless and even DeLay agreed when he apologized for them: “I said something in an inartful way, and I shouldn’t have said it that way, and I apologize for saying it that way…I didn’t explain it or clarify my remarks, as I’m clarifying them here…I am sorry that I said it that way, and I shouldn’t have.”